Rethinking Public Spaces

Durational

One-time event

At The Soap Factory

Installation

Interactive

Kid Friendly

Location

Podcast

Wheelchair

Bike

Bus

Walk

Rethinking Public Spaces

Rethinking Public Spaces presents eleven artist projects that enliven underutilized spaces throughout Minnesota, rethinking public space and considering what it means to place-make through a contemporary, celebratory, and critical lens.

Rethinking Public Spaces projects will take place around the exterior of The Soap Factory, across the Minneapolis/St Paul Metro, and throughout the state, including Rochester, Brainerd, and Cambridge.

Laura Brown: Coming Soon!

Project Description

The Soap Factory presents COMING SOON!, an outdoor installation by artist, Laura Brown. Brown will install screen printed faux construction signs around the perimeter of the Soap Factory during the upcoming building renovation. The shape and placement of each print allude to common safety signs found in construction zones. In this way, the pieces will act as artworks hidden in plain sight to activate the exterior and build anticipation for the soon-to-be renovated Soap Factory building.

In addition to the installation, Laura will host Open A-I-R studio sessions, inviting the public to print signs of solidarity, protest, or encouragement that relate to their day-to-day experiences in a wider world that is in various states of literal and metaphorical ‘renovation’.

Open A-I-R Studio Session

Open A-I-R Studio Session

Maria Cameron: Is Your Rebellion Sitting Still?

Project Description

Is Your Rebellion Sitting Still?, a project by artist Maria Cameron, will transform public spaces in Rochester, MN into spaces of contemplation, self-reflection, and conversation. By installing a series of large-scale thought bubbles on buildings and in community spaces that are considered works in progress, this project highlights the present flux this city is currently in. The questions aim to create dialogue about renovation and renewal inviting conversation about the meditative and often healing act of finding art in the every day. The viewer is given the opportunity to focus on some of the complicated questions that come with living, thriving, hurting, and healing.

Is Your Rebellion Sitting Still? consists of eight installations throughout the city of Rochester, MN. Two installations will be unveiled per week from July 24th until August 12th, ending with a walking tour with the artist. Installations will be up indefinitely.

Walking Tour with the Artist

Lamia Abukhadra and Leila Awadallah:The Wall

Project Description

In the wake of an election that has left us facing such xenophobic rhetoric as “Build the Wall” and establishing a “Muslim Ban,” many activists have said that we must build bridges in order to make human connections and provide people with sanctuary, not walls. As Palestinian Americans witnessing the destruction of communities and diverse ethnic and ecological landscapes, both in the U.S. and internationally, artists Lamia Abukhadra and Leila Awadallah are interested in breaking down walls that should never have existed.

With the support of The Soap Factory, Abukhadra and Awadallah are working with Martin Gonzales to build a physical wall at the Prospect Park Community Garden, where it can be easily discovered and interacted with. The installation will culminate in a final interactive performance in which the lead artists will invite the community to break down ‘The Wall.’ Abukhadra, Awadallah, and Gonzales hope to ultimately convey that a concrete or metal facade is just that: a facade. A wall can divide and negatively define communities, landscapes, ecologies and livelihoods, but it can and will be dismantled by the subversive acts of our community.

Closing Reception/ Destroy The Wall

Juxtaposition Arts

Project Description

This summer Juxtaposition Arts (JXTA) will build on the momentum they’ve created over the last 3 years around the celebration of Black August by combining the respective placemaking and art-based engagement skill sets of JXTA’s Public Arts, Tactical, and Environmental Design studios; using these skills to bring 2017 Black August programming outdoors on the intersection of Emerson and West Broadway Avenues in North Minneapolis. To set the stage, and in celebration of black life, JXTALab’s Public Art & Mural Teen apprentices will create a new on-site mural. This new mural imagines black life beyond surveillance and policing, while referencing the aesthetic style of Aaron Douglas. Please join us July 29th, during FLOW, the North Minneapolis Art Crawl, for outdoor programming and the unveiling of JXTA’s newly completed mural.

Mural Unveiling

Pete Driessen: Trestle Support Systems

Project Description

Pete Driessen will be orchestrating a large scale, abstract trestle sculpture and installation, reflecting contemporary culture in the Blacksmith Shop building at the Northern Pacific Railway Yard, Brainerd, MN. A trestle is often defined as a complex of braced framework serving as a vertical support structure, created with wooden timbers, rock piles, and iron or steelwork for carrying a horizontal traversed beam, such as a table-like road or railroad over a lower geographic depression. Trestle language, semiotics and symbolism are synonymous with current self-help trends of bootstrapping, sustainability and empowerment.

The Northern Pacific Railroad yard is a large historic grouping of 12 brick and wood beam buildings that sit on a massive 47-acre plot of land in Brainerd, MN. The massive industrial site contains the aesthetic atmosphere and former physical workings of the past turn-of-the-century railroad era. The old railroad Blacksmith Shop building is 50,000 square feet, with 20-foot high sidewalls, an 80-foot wide cross span, and concrete floors. Listed on National Register of Historic Places, the NP site is centrally located near the geographic center of the state. Both the industrial rawness and the monumental scale of the Northern Pacific site and its Blacksmith Shop space are reflective of The Soap Factory’s building.

Trestle consists of both public art project and exhibition. The exhibition will be open from October 28th to November 3rd, with regular gallery hours of 12pm-9pm. The public art project will be up indefinitely and viewable anytime during the day.

Andy Sturdevant and Sergio Vucci: Common Room

Project Description

Common Room is a series of artist-led tours of Twin Cities sites, with each tour themed around a specific concept that the group uses as a lens to explore facets of the urban geography — in the past, these themes have included cats, alleys, skyways, fishing, freeway construction, weather, community kitchens, personal memory, and many more. Common Room is the work by Sergio Vucci and Andy Sturdevant, along with a rotating lineup of contributors. Now in its eighth year, is using the occasion of the Rethinking Public Spaces project to expand the scope of its programming for this summer to travel beyond The Soap Factory, and various neighborhoods of the Twin Cities by foot, bicycle and bus. Common Room’s themes in 2017 will include silence, sacredness, islands, neighborhood music, and more.

Leyya Mona Tawil: Destroy// Minneapolis

Project Description

A new ritual for new times.

Leyya Tawil builds the work on location in one day with local artists.

In performance, the dance destroys itself.

In collaboration with local dancers and musicians, dance artist and composer, Leyya Mona Tawil, will bring her day long performance, ‘Destroy// All Places’, to The Soap Factory. ‘Destroy// All Places’ is a new ritual for new times. The performance is composed, but untethered. The artists attempt a score imbedded with mechanisms that make its execution increasingly impossible, forcing the material into stages of deterioration and evolution. ‘Destroy// All Places’ began in San Francisco in 2012, and has since visited over 23 cities including Saint Petersburg, Rome, Cairo and Athens. Over 100 artists have participated in the project internationally.

Tawil’s project for The Soap Factory, ‘Destroy// Minneapolis,’ is a metaphor for renewal and resistance. The health of a city is dependent on change; a change that requires destruction as part of the life cycle.

Performance

Monica Edwards Larson: Poetry of Resistance

Project Description

Monica Edwards Larson / Sister Black (Bike) Press’s project, Poetry of Resistance & Change, consists of two parts; a temporary installation of letterpress printed poetry cards and a collaborative one-time event: a poetry reading and DIY printing event using the mobile bicycle press at the Soap Factory. The installation will consist of hundreds of letterpress printed poetry cards that will be temporarily inserted within the construction fence on the property. The cards will feature the work of local poets whose work bears witness to the many challenges facing our democracy, the health of our planet, and all aspects of human rights that inspire action.

Sister Black Press’s event will begin with a Group Ride on September 16th, starting at 6pm. We will be traveling from Bryant Lake Bowl in Uptown, Minneapolis, ending at The Soap Factory at 7pm, for a Poetry Reading and Opening Reception.

Monica Sheets: Collectively We Support Your Autonomy

Project Description

Monica is installing a large-scale neon sign for the Soap Factory façade created in collaboration with Ne-Art Custom Neon in Northeast Minneapolis. The text, ‘Collectively we support your autonomy’, is a reflection of and comment on participatory processes and relationships between artist, participant, artwork and audience.

“This lesson also applies to the Soap Factory’s role in the Twin Cities’ art community. It is the support provided by organizations such as The Soap Factory that enables artists’ autonomy in exploring their varied interests and contributing their knowledge to the world. It is also our collective support of these organizations as artists, audience and volunteers that ensures their continued existence. It seems fitting to me to emphasize these reciprocal roles on The Soap Factory’s exterior while its interior is closed in order to undertake renovations that ensure its own autonomy and continued existence.” – Monica Sheets

Please join us for Collectively We Support Your Autonomy‘s Opening Reception. This installation will be up indefinitely outside of The Soap Factory.

Opening Reception

Jess Hirsch: Emotional Platings

Project Description

Emotional Platings is a series of picnic kits from trees that heal specific emotions, identified in the Bach Flower Essence philosophy developed by Edward Bach in the 1940s. Each picnic kit is crafted by the artist and includes a blanket, all serving ware, a notecard with conversational prompts, and a notebook to take notes on the conversation. The public will check out a specific kit in advance, asked to bring food to share, and paired with a stranger based on the emotion they have selected. Jess Hirsch is traveling to 5 rural towns throughout Minnesota, asking 160 people to check out a kit and explore emotion together.

Emotional Intelligence is the ability to accurately identify an emotion and react appropriately through awareness. This may seem simple, however, emotions convolute our behavior making us react quickly without recognizing our motivations. Hirsch hopes to connect people through shared experience of human emotions. With the ordinary act of eating, she hopes that we can better understand our differences and expose our commonalities.

Emotional Platings picnics will be available at the following towns at the subsequent date and time. There are 32 slots open to participate in a picnic at a local public park in each location. Jess will be working with local liaisons on scheduling and announcing when slots are open, and how to sign up; these releases will be made through local media outlets, in addition to The Soap Factory website and Social Media event pages.

The artist wants to capstone the project through a booklet and website archive to share photos, conversation snippets, a list of meals shared together, and information on the healing trees. Please join us on after the project on December 16th for a Book Release and Artist Talk with Jess Hirsch, location and time TBA.

Participatory Picnics

October 1st, 12:00pm – 2:00pm

Cambridge, MN: Location TBA

October 7th, 12:00pm – 2:00pm

Willmar, MN: Location TBA

October 8th, 12:00pm – 2:00pm

Milan, MN: Location TBA

October 14th, 12:00pm – 2:00pm

Fergus Falls, MN: Location TBA

October 15th, 12:00pm – 2:00pm

Delano, MN: Location TBA

Artist Talk and Book Release

Aaron Dysart: Surface

Project Description

Somehow both expansive and dense, the lock at the Upper St. Anthony Falls is of course outside, but feels somehow interior, almost internal. Its’ tall walls and liquid floor struggle to even define much less confine this dense space. With the lower gates permanently open, its’ imposing presence is constantly visible from the historic Stone Arch Bridge standing as a testament to the utilitarian history of this great river.

Taking data from the extensive logbooks kept by the staff of the Army Corp of Engineering over the years, this project will speak to the times this space was filled with the Mississippi River. Data derived from handwritten pool heights will dictate a constant shifting background color while the color intensity will speak to the times the lock was emptied or filled with the river allowing for navigation of the falls. This spectacle will thus display the 52 year operating history of this central iconic Minneapolis space through data recorded by the people who tended it.

Surface will be viewable at the Upper St. Anthony Falls Lock and Dam, and Stone Arch Bridge, September 15th and 16th only, 7:30-10pm.

This project is presented as part of Illuminate the Lock by Northern Lights.mn, Mississippi Park Connection, the National Park Service and as part of Here & There by The Soap Factory, with support from St. Anthony Falls Heritage Board and the US Army Corp of Engineers.